Larry Kaplan is my dentist. He’s got an office in Scotch Plains, NJ. You can look it up.

On a cop’s pension, I have to get my teeth drilled wherever the union health plan has a deal. And that’s Kaplan. If he’d just stick to teeth, maybe he’d be ok. I don’t know. You ever meet a dentist who was a fun guy?

>> Meet the Jerk

Larry’s deal is that he really wants to be a writer. He thinks he’s some sort of goddam Tom Clancy or something. The problem is that Kaplan doesn’t have an original idea in his head. So he’s got to steal ideas from other people. I think he figures that he’s got those patients all trapped in that fancy chair of his, with the tubes in your mouth and that lobster bib around your neck.

So what does he do? He asks me “What’s up.”

And I tell him. You gonna tell a guy with a drill in his hand that you don’t want to talk? I think they tried that at Guantanamo. So while I’m sitting there waiting for the x-ray to develop or that glue he uses to dry, I start blabbing about what’s on my mind.

I didn’t realize this guy’s taking mental notes on what I say. Next thing I know, he hands me a bunch of paper and says, “What do you think? I wrote down some of your stories. Maybe I’ll make a book and make you famous.”

Forget that. But then Kaplan tells me that if he makes any money from these books he’s gonna give some of the cash to these orphans in Africa and to the Boy Scouts here in Westfield.

That’s unfair. Even a broken cop with bad teeth has a heart.

So I says, “Ok, you can write this stuff. But I ain’t going to no Hollywood if you get a movie deal. But you better make sure those orphans and Boy Scouts and Brownies get some dough out of this. Or I swear one of these day’s I’m going bite your cold clammy hand right off!”

I will, too, if Kaplan doesn’t pull all my choppers first.

Listen to the Jerk himself:

Larry Kaplan on Radio WDIY in Bethelem, PA

Part 1:

Part 2: